Children play in grim Sydney slum after WWII

While children might have played in its streets, Surry Hills was in the midst of a long period of deterioration in the late 1940s. The population had fallen below 20,000, as many left to avoid the stigma of the Sydney slums. Novelist Ruth Park wrote that most people, perhaps unfairly, thought of Surry Hills “in terms of brothels, razor gangs, tenements and fried fish shops”, and judged its tenants accordingly. The influx of post-WWII Greek, Italian, Portuguese and Lebanese migrants is credited for revitalising the area in the years that followed. (State Library of New South Wales, Flickr)